A central part of being a research scientist is getting grants to fund your work. Subsidizing lab equipment, paying for assistants’ and other staff members’ salaries, and making sure that you are getting a proper income are obstacles that you likely have to overcome before even starting a research project.
But getting grants is tricky, not least because they are becoming more and more competitive. In 2017, the National Science Foundation (NSF) received 49,415 research proposals and funded only 11,447, or less than 25% of them. For grants relevant to psychology researchers, the funding success rate is usually around 8% to 10%. Researchers abroad are facing similarly intimidating numbers—the European Commission’s Horizon 2020 program, which is the European Union’s largest ever research and innovation program, reported that its first 100 calls for proposals had a 14% success rateopens in new window.
Grants are especially vital for those in “soft money” positions, which require researchers to bring in some percentage of their annual salary from grants, but they can be just as important for those in “hard money” positions, where salary is not dependent on external funding.
“Grants aren’t really just about money. They’re also about being able to do work you know is important, being able to better serve communities that you care about, or solving and addressing problems and challenges in our world,” said Betty Lai, PhD, an associate professor of counseling psychology at Boston College who is currently writing a book about applying for grants. “Time is a nonrenewable resource. Grants often provide time for you to think about these important issues.” More specifically, grants allow researchers to pay for research assistants, postdocs, and other resources that distribute the workload and free up more time for the researchers to think about big ideas.
For these reasons, it’s key for researchers to apply for grants early and often. It’s also necessary to share tips and tricks for getting grants with others—something that is especially true for researchers from underrepresented backgrounds, who tend to have fewer connections, along with less grant fundingopens in new window, than their White colleagues. “People who are better networked have a better understanding of how the process works. But we shouldn’t be judging best networks,” said Lai. “We’re supposed to be funding the best ideas.”
So, what are the tips and tricks that can increase your chances of landing a grant? Lai and other experienced researchers, program officers, and directors offered their advice.
Do your research
Before submitting a grant application, it’s important to do extensive research on available grants and who is funding them. “There are different levels of grants. There are grants that you can get from the National Institutes of Health, and when you get an NIH grant it might be a million dollars and you get that to sustain your lab for a few years,” said Michelle Quist Ryder, PhD, who is the program director for the American Psychological Foundation (APF) and manages more than 60 grant, scholarship, and award programs. Other grants, like those awarded by the APF, are aimed toward graduate students and early career researchers who need to complete a small project. Landing this type of funding can help researchers become more competitive for big NSF or NIH grants down the road.
It can be useful to start by identifying exactly what your project needs, Ryder said. For example, are you undertaking a preliminary pilot study? Postdoctoral research? Or do you need funding for a large research project that will last for several years and pay your salary? Once identified, you can narrow down what type of funding agencies would best suit your project.
It’s also key to create a budget that includes staff, research materials, and other big expenses that are needed to support a large research infrastructure. This budget will affect the grant that you choose, and creating one in advance is a step that is often missed by early career scientists.
Then, spend a lot of time on the funder’s website looking through the requirements for the grant you want to apply for. Most grants have detailed lists of what the funder is looking for, what is required to apply, due dates, and other information.
Create a relationship with your program officer
Researching grants can leave you with more questions than answers, and that’s where program officers come in. The chief job of a program officer is to provide administrative and technical assistance to applicants who are submitting a proposal to a funding agency. They also often serve as the principal liaison between an investigator and the agency and are therefore invaluable in guiding researchers through the application process.
Program officers don’t merely provide yes or no feedback, and they have a lot of experience reading proposal drafts and hearing how grants are reviewed. Some will even read grant drafts and provide comments or share information on the types of issues that will likely be brought up during review panels. “Speaking to the program officer before submitting a proposal can save a lot of time and effort,” said Patricia Van Zandt, a program director in NSF’s Division of Behavioral and Cognitive Sciences who works directly with program officers and oversees the grant review process. “Although their project may be competitive, a researcher risks having their proposal declined if it isn’t work that a program supports,” she said.
Another responsibility of a program officer is to ensure diversity in their portfolio, or collection of research projects, said Van Zandt. “This diversity is reflected not only in the range of scientific questions addressed by the excellent projects that the program supports but also in the institutions and researchers who have received support,” she said. Speaking to your program officer before submitting a grant proposal can help you make certain that your research idea fits within their portfolio.
An easy way to identify your program officer is to look up the current funding opportunity announcement for the grant you want to apply for, which should have agency contacts and links to the program officer contact. As soon as you have a reasonable draft of your specific project aims, reach out to them. Be concise in your email and make sure to highlight your central question and the hypothesis you’re proposing to test, along with any additional questions you have, including regarding the agency’s potential enthusiasm for your proposed work, according to a blog post on NIH grantsopens in new window by Jennifer Kong, PhD, a postdoctoral research fellow in biochemistry at Stanford University.
Grant proposals are really a collaboration between you and your program officer, and it can pay off to take advantage of this valuable resource.
The importance of good science writing
Scientists often write for a specific audience and with a lot of jargon. Perhaps one of the hardest parts of creating a grant proposal is adjusting your writing so that it’s clear, concise, and for a broad, nonacademic audienceopens in new window.
A great way to get a feel for what this type of writing looks like is to get samples of successful grants from your colleagues or to search for grant writing workshops. “I believe all researchers should have access to grant writing training. Luck of the draw in training shouldn’t determine who gets funded,” Lai wrote on her websiteopens in new window. “We need to hear and fund society’s best ideas.”
One of the key challenges in grant writing is crafting a compelling one-page statement, which appears at the start of most grants. “Where people often go wrong is they forget to start first with why we need to do this work,” said Lai. “They often start with the what. They talk about what they’re going to do, but you need to tell first why this question matters.” This is hard for many researchers, Lai said, because you’re no longer talking about what is happening in the present or what happened in the past but instead what you are envisioning in the future—something that is not often taught in graduate school.
To help organize the writing and make it more easily readable, make judicious use of formatting (bold, underlining, italics) and figures and diagrams. Think of the whole proposal like a sales pitch: Be crystal clear; avoid subtle nuance; and use powerful, urgent prose that shows your command of the literature and the unmet scientific needs that require addressing. By doing this, you create a positive experience for reviewers and increase the chance they will want to support your research.
William Riley, PhD, associate director for behavioral and social sciences research at NIH, agrees with this point. “I like to remind prospective grantees that reviewers have limited time to review and discuss their grant application, so writing an application that is concise, well organized, and understandable to a broad range of research experts is important,” he said.
Use rejections as an opportunity to learn
No matter how successful a researcher you are, you will still face a lot of grant rejections. On the same day that Carol Greider, PhD, won a Nobel Prize in physiology or medicine in 2009, a grant proposal she had recently submitted was rejectedopens in new window.
Many times, it just comes down to the amount of grant proposals being submitted. “The success rate of NIH research program grant applications is about 20%, so there is an 80% chance that your grant application will not be funded,” said Riley. “It is important to learn from the reviews provided and submit a revised application or a different new application based on the reviewers’ feedback.”
With this in mind, make sure the fear of rejection doesn’t stop you from applying for grants in the first place, said Lai. “Many people think, ‘I’m not ready yet, I’m too early in my career, I haven’t published enough.’ You are ready! You can submit!” In fact, applying early can benefit you in the long run, as many granting agencies make special dispensations for early career researchers.
It’s also important to “allow yourself to sit with the grief and disappointment of getting a rejection,” said Lai. “But then pick yourself up, call your program officer, see if you can get additional feedback, and keep submitting.” One of the key lessons researchers must learn when they get rejected is that “no grant, even a rejected grant, is wasted work.” A rejected grant helps you find what didn’t work for your future proposals, and you can also talk about it in your annual review or resubmit the grant somewhere else. “Treat it as a learning experience,” Lai said.
Ryder recommends that researchers try not to take the rejection personally. “There have been so many times when there is a program where the reviewers and I and everyone who sees the projects have lamented because there are really awesome projects that we just don’t have the funds to sponsor,” she said. When you get a rejection, you often feel like you didn’t write a good proposal, but that isn’t always the case. “It’s not pulling a diamond out of a rough, it’s pulling a jewel out of a basket of jewels,” Ryder said.
Search far and wide for grants
Remember that there are plenty of other places to look for grants in addition to the big federal agencies. There are societies, including APA and APF, that offer smaller grants that are far less cumbersome to apply for, offer great experience in grant writing, and can significantly boost a researcher’s résumé.
